Small Islands and ZERI: A unique case for the Application of ZERI
George Chan
United Nations University
Paper presented at an International Symposium on "Small Islands and Sustainable Development" organized by the United Nations University and the National Land Agency of Japan.
The first complete input-out table covering a whole economic
system ever made was compiled for the Swedish island of Godtland,
the traditional Hanseatic city state around Visby that was once one
of the leading trading partners of the world. The outlook for
Godtland and the rest of the Baltic is not so encouraging. The
latest closure of the sugar processing plant makes an additional
one thousand persons redundant. The future of the island economy
in a Baltic Sea where all the economies around the rim are faced
with rampant inflation and high unemployment demonstrates that the
critical choices islands are facing in the Caribbean, the Pacific
or even in Norther Europe are not so distinct indeed.
Island economies, and for all the crisis that they are facing
in the wake of global warming, rising pollution, over-fishing,
unsustainable tourism, and export driven economies demands a most
creative approach. The advantage is through, that as island
economies can easily undertake input-output studies, these nations
can also undertake the most advanced output-input studies, which
are at the core of the methodology for the zero emissions research
initiative that the UNU has launched in 1994. After all, islands
have all the problems to face the economists and environmentalists
can enumerate. Though these states have the advantage that their
inherent economies of scale permits them to address the issues at
stake in an integrated way, likely to offer models for sustainable
development for the rest of the world to learn from.
Indeed, sustainable development requires an integrated
approach, a complex systems modelling. And when industry and urban
development needed to mimic nature's concept of "all waste equals
food," it is easier -though still difficult - to achieve on an
island than for a land-locked national. A detailed review of the
output of al activities on an island will quickly identify input-
imports which are non sustainable, that could be substituted by
highly sustainable and low toxic products. The case of beer,
cleansing agents and construction materials are cases which
demonstrate that the opportunities for local development are legio,
but that the vision and the determination seems lacking. It is
against this background that the ZERI programme is motivated to
provide all the support needed to secure a successful study of the
island economies with sustainability as the driving concept behind
the development process.
Pilot Project in Fiji
After one year of consultations and feasibility studies by the
United Nations University, coordinated by Mr. Gunter Pauli, Founder
of Zero Emission Research Initiative (ZERI), an International
Expert Meeting on Brewing-Aqua-Agriculture (ZERI-BAG) was held in
Beijing on 1-4 April 1995, followed by a ZERI World Congress in
Tokyo on 5-7 April 1995, and a one-day workshop with Mr. Pauli and
the ZERI panel of experts: Prof. Li Wenhua from China, Prof. Keto
Mshigeni from Tanzania, Dr. Mauricio Carcia-Franco from Venezuela,
Mr. Eng-Leong Foo from Sweden and Prof. George Chan from Mauritius.
The latter, who is the author of the ensuing report, was given the
responsibility to design and implement a pilot project to make
maximum use of the residues of an existing brewery in Fiji.
The author already has a long and fruitful association with
Fiji where he built his first Integrated Farming System 26 years
ago. It consisted of a piggery with digester, algae basin, fish
pond with ducks, and vegetable garden in Sawani village, 16 km out
of Suva, Capital of Fiji. It provided biogas for cooking and
lighting, feed for the fish and ducks, and fertilizer for various
crops. Some crop residues were used as pig feed, which was
supplemented with wheat bran, wheat pollard and fish meal from
local industries. Since then, the author has advocated integrated
farming systems in 71 countries and territories, and has
demonstrated that individual family integrated farms are viable
entities where water is always available, which is always the case
in the wet tropics.
The best locations are low-lying lands and marshes, which are
marginal and not presently utilized because of easy flooding, and
where the soil is suitable for brickmaking it can be sold to
finance the integrated farm, which is the success story of Vietnam
where the author is involved in a people-oriented eco-farm project.
The objectives have been to provide the individual farm family
with affordable means of production for economic and ecological
rural development in a self-reliant system without costly inputs or
environmental degradation by integrating various agro-industrial
activities. They include different livestock using local feeds to
produce the daily wastes as raw materials to operate an appropriate
digester for primary anaerobic treatment with production of biogas
fuel; shallow basins for secondary aerobic treatment with growth of
natural algae to produce the required oxygen and the algae used as
feed; deep ponds for tertiary treatment & polyculture of fish and
macrophytes as food and feed; pond water demineralization with
fertilization and irrigation ("fertigation") of various crops using
multicropping, aquaponics and aeroponics; and natural processing of
crops enhanced with biogas-operated equipment or processes and
using the crop and processing residues as livestock feed. So far,
in Vietnam, the income of individual families involved with the
integrated farms designed by the author are earning up to 20 times
the income they used to get with rice monoculture, while doing less
routine work. With additional innovations and higher-value crops,
the income can be considerably improved. Such highly-rewarding
rural development is unique, and unmatched anywhere in the world.
Integrating such a farming system with a brewery to treat and
utilize the brewery wastes can be a viable proposition not only for
the beer manufacturers themselves, but also for adjacent farmers
receiving the brewery wastes and willing to use the integrated
farming systems to solve the brewery waste pollution problems while
recovering the resources as means of production such as fuel, feed
and fertilizer, for their own farm activities.
Justification
Beer manufacture and consumption are increasing worldwide, in
particular the developing nations, and produce huge amounts of
wastes which are too costly to treat or dispose of, and are
consequently left to degrade the environment. The objectives are
to have brewers and farmers collaborate for mutual benefits by
utilizing all the wastes as useful resources, after full treatment
using natural processes and at very low costs, and make beer
brewing as well as other similar industrial processes more economic
without any environmental pollution or depletion of natural
resources.
Processes
The one-hectare pilot plant will be built as near as possible
to an existing brewery, provided that the subsoil retains water. It
will use some of the different wastes produced to demonstrate the
validity and capacity of 5 main processes as shown in Figures 1 and
2.
The wastes are as follows:
(i) Solid Wastes
The solid wastes are the residues from grains and additives
used in beer making, and have a high protein and fibre content,
They are too indigestible as an effective feed for livestock
because of the ligno- cellulose, so it is broken down naturally by
growing straw mushroom (Volvariella volvacea) on it with simple
means -- a common occupation of farmers in China and Vietnam. It is
proposed to try the shitake mushroom (Lentinus edodes), which is
the most expensive in the world, using a technique developed in
Fijian, China, using brewery wastes and straw instead of cutting
down oak trees. Another way of using the solid wastes more
economically is to grow selected earthworms of high protein content
as chicken feeds, instead of feeding them with grains. The residues
can be used as good compost, or used in feed formulation.
The livestock produce wastes which are given primary treatment in
a digester while producing biogas as fuel for the brewery. There
are many digester designs to choose from, and they vary from the
brick and concrete one for small digesters which was designed by
the author and built at various places in Fiji for more than 20
years, and reinforced concrete or steel ones for big ones, using
plug-flow or up-flow, which must be specially designed to suit
individual cases. For the pilot project, the brick and concrete
digester will be used but with an arched roof instead of the
conventional reinforced concrete roof, as shown in Figure 3.
The effluent is used to grow algae in shallow basins by
photosynthesis while producing oxygen during the day to give
secondary treatment to the remaining wastes by oxidation. At least
two basins should be provided, used on alternate days to allow
algae to grow undisturbed for one day for optimum yield. The algae
are also flushed every two days into deep ponds as fish feed. Most
algae basins fail when the accumulated dead algae consume more
oxygen than what is produced by the live ones. It is also better to
make use of a natural resource to feed fish rather than letting it
rot in the basins.
The highly-mineralized effluent flowing into the deep ponds
also encourages prolific growth of various plankton as fish feeds.
So fish polyculture, which has been widely practiced in China for
centuries, can produce 10 to 15 tons of fish per hectare per year
without having to add artificial feed except for grass grown on the
edges of ponds to feed the grass carp. Five or more other kinds of
fish are used to feed on the different plankton produced daily,
which is important because any feed, natural or artificial, that is
not consumed is a potential pollutant.
The fish in turn produce their own wastes which are treated
naturally by the self-purification capacity of the pond water, and
the mineralized effluent is then used to irrigate and fertilize all
kinds of crops in aquaponic floats made of bamboo or organically
produced plastic panels on half the pond surface, on in aeroponic
towers and greenhouses on land -- all current practices in China.
(ii) Liquid Wastes
Too much water is used in beer making for cleaning purposes -
between 20-30 tons to make one ton of beer in developing countries,
and at least 7 tons in the developed ones, which makes treatment of
liquid wastes very expensive, and even prohibitive in the poorer
nations. So the first logical step is to reduce this wastage of
water, first by better housekeeping and then by using organic
cleaners instead of caustic soda and other toxic materials. The
BOD varies between 1,000 and 1,500 mg/l, and the COD is 508 more.
Such a huge quantity of water should be recycled, but not in
digesters because of the prohibitive costs involved, but in a
minimum of two long and narrow primary ponds of 1 metre deep for at
least two days' retention.
As for the algae basins in (i) above, the design of the ponds
should also provide for their individual flushing into the deep
fish ponds by gravity, as clearly shown in Figure 2, in order to
avoid the problem of dead algae accumulation. It must be added that
cleaning the primary ponds is not as easy as cleaning the algae
basins, and can put the plant out of action for many days, so the
need to flush the primary ponds every two days becomes much more
important. The discharge of so much dead organic matter into fish
ponds or rivers can also create some major pollution problems as
well, because of depletion of the dissolved oxygen.
(iii) Waste Heat
The waste heat from the brewing process should be recovered
and used to heat water for washing the equipment or other uses. The
biogas generated from the livestock wastes is a convenient source
of fuel for the same purpose in the pilot project. For a full-size
treatment plant for the whole brewery, electricity can be generated
from the biogas to supply most of the brewery needs.
Recovery of the waste heat is not urgent in the pilot plant,
so this work is better left to the other bigger pilot projects of
ZERI.
(iv) Carbon Dioxide
Much carbon dioxide gas is emitted during the brewing process
and can be recovered for use in the brewery itself or bottled under
pressure and used for draught beer. Unfortunately, the equipment
is still relatively expensive for the small breweries, and it is
hoped that less expensive equipment will be available for trial in
this pilot plant. Other possibilities such as the use the carbon
dioxide in greenhouses, or its conversion into sodium bicarbonate
for higher production of high-protein spirulina, will be tried
instead.
(v) Spent Yeast
The technologies are already available for recovery and reuse
of yeast, and for manufacture of some pharmaceuticals, with the
residues mineralized in bio-oxidation ponds before using them to
fertilize fish ponds. This pilot project will not be involved in
such work, as it will be dealt with on a bigger scale in other ZERI
plants.
Objectives
With the exception of waste heat, bottled CO2 and spent yeast,
which the brewery itself should do because of economy of scale, the
main objectives of this pilot plant are to recycle all the other
wastes or residues on small individual farms around the brewery,
effectively and efficiently, especially under the favourable
tropical climatic conditions, and utilize all the byproducts as
completely as possible without costly inputs or environmental
degradation. It is true that the main purpose of a brewery is to
make beer for profit, so the recycling processes must show a profit
too or the brewers will have no incentive to include them in their
brewery operations. On the other hand, the individual farmer must
also have immediate and tangible benefits for accepting to recycle
the solid and liquid wastes of the brewery. The proposed pilot
project is to convince them that the wastes or residues are
resources which can be used, with or without microbial and other
inexpensive processing, as fuel, fertilizer, feed or raw materials
for the brewery or for the adjacent farms willing to collaborate in
such work. The results will be available for the second ZERI World
Congress which will be held in Chattanooga, USA, in 1996.
Immediate action
It is fortunate that much field work regarding such a project
has already been done by the author in many countries, and the
experience can be put to good use on a small scale for more study
or investigation at a worldwide level before designing the full
scale plant. Much time and money will be saved because top
priority has been given to this pilot plant by UNU-ZERI.
Procedure
The best way for UNU-ZERI to proceed is to involve the various
Fijian government departments concerned in the implementation of
this project, as they are more familiar with the local conditions.
Three of them are identified below as the principal ones, with
others called upon to help as and when required, and they should
contribute their available expertise and the use of any equipment,
machinery and any other tools they already possess, and UNU-ZERI
will pay for the required labour, fuel and other materials. Fiji
should also provide all the necessary local transport for the
project.
- The most suitable site should be near the brewery, with the
subsoil clayey enough to hold water without importing clay
from elsewhere. A low-lying or even marshy land is the best
site, unless it is too acidic. The Department of Lands and
Surveys can help to locate a suitable site of 1-2 hectares of
marginal land for the pilot plant, with possibility for
expansion to meet the needs of the brewery. The Government of
Fiji, or the brewery itself, should contribute the land for
the pilot project. The required amount of solid and liquid
wastes should also be supplied free of charge by the brewery
to the project, as requested by UNU-ZERI.
- The major works consist of digging the two deep ponds and the
construction of the digester. The Department of Public Works
can help with bulldozers and excavators to remove one metre of
soil in each pond and build up the dykes on the sides to a
height of 3.5 metres. The ponds will be filled with water to
a depth of 3 metres. The construction of the digester will
require bricklaying for the walls and some formwork for
reinforced concrete for the floor and half the arched roof
slabs. The minor works involve the algae basins and
bio-oxidation ponds. UNU-ZERI will pay for the labour, fuel
and other materials needed.
- The livestock, fish, crops and other farming activities are
the concern of the Department of Agriculture, Stock and
Fisheries which will make use of the nutrients produced in the
treatment processes, operate all farming activities, and
collect all relevant growth data. It also provides all the
required livestock, fish, plants and seeds for the project,
together with their supplemental feeds, and have them back
free of charge when they are ready for market. To save both
time and money, some specialized crops and growing techniques
such as aquaponics and aeroponics may have to be introduced to
local staff by appropriate experts from overseas, and paid for
by UNU-ZERI.
Schedule
The construction period will take two months, and the facility
will start functioning a month later. The author will be available
to build the project in late 1995. During that period, he can
conduct courses for staff of various departments to operate the
facility. At the end of August, an expert meeting of ZERI-BAG can
he held in Fiji to evaluate the pilot project. By the end of 1995,
the Department of Agriculture can take over and work with the staff
of the brewery to train them for eventual transfer of the facility
to them. In February 1996, another expert meeting can be held in
Fiji for evaluation and report to the Second ZERI World Congress in
the United States of America.
Prospects
Obviously, this proposal is not appropriate for breweries
which are located in urbanized areas or where land price is
prohibitive. It is most suitable in suburban areas and in the
developing world where new breweries are more likely to be built in
the future. There should be a mandatory requirement that any new
brewery should be located where it can be surrounded by individual
integrated farms, where all concerned could benefit tremendously
from Zero Emission, as shown in Figure 4. Otherwise, no brewery or
any other industrial activity which pollutes the environment should
be approved by the local authorities.
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